


Not in the Cards

by Zeke Black (istia)



Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: M/M, Old West, POV Buck Wilmington
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2019-06-27 20:30:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15692829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/istia/pseuds/Zeke%20Black
Summary: Buck and the rest of the Seven's ordinary day playing poker in the saloon turns out to be not entirely ordinary.





	Not in the Cards

"I see Butt Ugly's joining us again today."

JD giggled into his milk while Nathan huffed a laugh around lighting a cigar. Josiah gave one of his enigmatic smiles before picking up his glass of whiskey and turning it in his hand.

Then all four of them, with mirrored movements that Buck only noticed at the last moment, turned to watch Ezra crossing the saloon toward them with his usual air of nonchalant disdain. Buck noted with fascination how Ezra was still, even now, managing to pull off the look of an arrogant asshole with far too lofty matters on his mind to notice the gapes of the folk all around himself.

The thing they watched for intently, though, the truly strange and amazing part of the whole thing, was how he sailed across the room, resplendent in a purple coat and gaudy checkered satin waistcoat, as though he weren't actually carrying an outright hairy demon on his shoulder.

Ezra plopped down into a chair between Josiah and Nathan, still straight-backed and elegant, eyes bright, head held high. You'd think there weren't any sort of weight at all on his shoulders; no fur brushing against the bare skin of his neck and cheek each time he turned his head; no thin scabby tail swishing against the shoulder of his expensive coat.

No malevolent orange eyes in a squashed gray face looking balefully at each, or any, of them who caught its attention with some tiny movement or a sound. Or just breathing, maybe. That was probably all it took to get the attention of the Beast.

"Gentlemen." Ezra looked around the table until his eyes inevitably zeroed in on the bottle sitting in Josiah's and Chris's vicinity. "Good Lord, has somebody actually coughed up money for a decent bottle of whiskey?"

He leaned forward, arm stretched out, fingers reaching for the bottle. The creature on his shoulder dug its claws into the thick wool material of his coat to keep its perch. And thank the gods of sagebrush and crickets for that! Buck shuddered and took another mouthful of beer while reflecting on what horrors might occur if the thing ever lost its grip on Ezra and tumbled free into their midst. The blood spatter would take buckets of hot scrubbing water to get rid of.

It willingly tolerated Ezra--maybe, he'd speculated to Josiah, because it recognized a kindred fiendish spirit--but nobody else could get near it. Millie, one of Inez's helpers, had made a beeline across the saloon the first time she saw Ezra with his new decoration. A cheerful, warm young woman, she'd been smiling hugely as she'd leaned forward to stare into the venomous orange eyes, cooing and slowly lifting her hand toward it...until it curled its lip, baring its long, sharp teeth at her and emitted a combination of a hiss and a growl while its whole ugly mug contorted into an even more foul grimace. She'd jerked back, startled, then murmured, "Well, all right," and had retreated with all her flesh intact.

JD, of course, had also tried to make friends with the creature, all the boy's innocent friendliness leading him to reach out a hand while murmuring, "Nice little fella, good fella."

A high-pitched squealing hiss accompanied a lightning-quick flash of claws and JD was jerking his hand back with blood dripping from all four of his fingers.

"Huh," Nathan had said in Nathan's calm way as he'd dabbed at the cuts with alcohol before binding them up, "I reckon that creature still don't like people. Maybe never will, given what they done to it."

So then it came out that Ezra, on an early-morning visit to the outhouse, had come upon the two McMann boys in an alley about to set fire to a bundle of gray fur stinking of kerosene. Ezra had dealt with the brats (without even shooting either of them, not even a teeny-tiny flesh wound), then woken Nathan up for advice on how to get kerosene out of fur. He'd had the beast wrapped in his coat, apparently, where it had suffered his attentions but had made it clear, despite its desperate state, that it wouldn't tolerate Nathan coming anywhere near it. So Nathan had provided a salve and instructions, emphasizing Ezra's need to wash the thing's eyes out well with clear water.

Last Nathan saw of him, he said, Ezra'd been heading for the bath house in search of warm water and soap.

Being Ezra, he probably did convince the bath house keeper to draw a tub of warm, soapy water for the infernal creature even at the crack of dawn. Well, convinced him with a fat tip.

First any of the rest of them knew of the beast was seeing Ezra the next day with the scrawny, limp, scabrous thing on his shoulder. Then there were JD's bloodied fingers, after which the rest of them looked on warily as the ugly creature looked back at them with an equal helping of disgust and distrust.

That was around a month ago now. Over that span of days, the creature had fattened up and its gray coat, while still patchy where the kerosene had burned its skin, had an actual glossy sheen to it. It was getting to look almost sleek. And the incident didn't appear to have hurt its eyes, after all, since they spent most of their time glaring at anybody who got within a couple feet of Ezra. Even when you'd goldarn swear the blasted thing was fast asleep, draped like an actual shawl across Ezra's shoulders, soon as anybody got too close to him/them, those burning eyes opened, if only into a squint, and it started the low warning growl.

All of which Ezra paid no attention to as if nothing unusual were happening at all.

The problem was there wasn't anything that could make that creature anything other than a creepy, unnatural looking thing, like nothing normal any of them had ever seen. So, fine, it was a cat; Buck had conceded Josiah's argument that it looked and sounded _more_ like a cat than anything else any of them could think of, so it was probably a cat. It had the relative shape and size of a cat, though one on the smaller side of things. It was covered in short gray fur, which was normal enough, but its face was like somebody had hit it with an iron skillet when it was a kitten: its face was flat as a pancake and dominated by two large, glowing, bright orange, evil eyes.

Those eyes stared out at the world and said, clear as speaking, _I hate you all_.

Except Ezra. The dang thing was as ornery as Ezra, so it only stood to reason they'd latched onto each other.

Though it was amusing how Ezra paid the creature no mind, mostly acting like he wasn't carrying around an obnoxious looking sack of hissing and spitting gray fur on his shoulders, and the creature clung to Ezra's shoulders, or wrapped itself around his neck, but otherwise took no notice of him. Or none that anybody ever saw.

They'd become a single monstrous being.

The most surprising thing, to Buck's thinking, was that Ezra didn't seem to care about the cat hair on his fancy duds. When he noticed it, he just absently brushed it off, then went back to his cards or his drinking or his grifting or his pontificating about some subject close to his heart, usually involving how to make a few extra bucks to supplement their pitiful wages.

In other words, nothing had changed other than Ezra's going around all day and night with the rat ugliest piece of fur draped around his neck nonstop.

"But where d'you think it came from?" JD asked for at least the tenth time. "Nobody's ever seen nothing like it round here. It must've come from _somewhere_."

Ezra had departed across the room a few minutes earlier to help some newcomers spend the money that was obviously, he'd said, burning a hole in their pockets.

The rest of them were settled at their usual table in the back, where Chris and Vin could sit with their backs to the wall and they all had a clear view of any trouble that might come in the door. They were playing their own low-key game for penny stakes, just to while away the hottest part of the day.

Buck shrugged and saw Nathan and Josiah looking likewise out of theories. Vin never had offered an opinion one way or another. Next to him, Chris just sat staring at his cards in one hand, his other curled around his glass, showing exactly as much interest as he usually did--which is to say, none--in Ezra, the creature, and Ezra's shenanigans in general.

"Maybe it came out of the mist." JD grinned at them while wiping the back of his hand over his mouth. "You know, just formed itself out of a bank of fog, all gray fur and hellfire eyes."

Buck stared at JD for a long moment, wondering yet again how the kid had managed to survive this long.

"We don't exactly get many banks of fog round these parts, JD, case you hadn't noticed. I can't recall the last mist of any kind we had. It ain't even rained in more'n a month!"

"Yeah, but if it really is a demon creature, it could've formed its own mist, just a little swirl of gray to spit it out fully formed."

"Uh-huh." Buck threw down a three of hearts and picked up the ten of spades Nathan dealt him. "I worry about you sometimes, boy."

Vin gave a low chuckle while discarding two cards, then spoke in a lazy voice. "Reckon it maybe come with that Eastern lady who was here a few weeks ago, the one that raised a ruckus about her cat going missing. Pretty sure when she got on the stage a couple days later, she still hadn't found it."

Buck turned his head to stare at Vin, then caught all the others, except Chris, doing the same. Again with the ridiculous mirror dance; maybe they spent too much time together.

Nathan was frowning. "I don't recall any Eastern lady with a cat."

"Nobody ever did see the cat that I ever heard." Josiah had the benign look that meant he was holding a damned good hand. "I think you were out at the Thatchers' place. Old Tim was dying at about that time. We held the funeral a couple of days or so after she'd left."

"Oh, hey, that's right, I forgot all about that lady. She was real noisy about that cat of hers." JD threw his cards face down on the table with a heavy sigh. "I just figured it'd be a normal cat, though, you know?"

Josiah was looking thoughtful. "She did seem devoted to it. Funny that it ran off and never came out for all her calling and fussing."

JD nodded. "Yeah, because it sure ain't like Four Corners is a big place! Only so many hideaway spots, even for a critter on the small side."

Buck took a swallow of his beer, wondering whether to chance discarding another card. Josiah obviously had a good hand held close to his chest and you never could tell with Chris, who was still taking no notice of them all as usual.

"Maybe the critter weren't as fond of her as she was of it." Vin shrugged. "Maybe she weren't all that nice to it herself. Or maybe it was just sick of being stuffed into a little basket all the time."

"Then it almost got itself killed, if Ezra hadn't happened along. Maybe he should name it Lucky." JD grinned. "Better'n Butt Ugly."

Nathan shook his head. "Maybe he has named it and he just ain't sharing. They do appear to be an inseparable pair these days. I don't think a soul could pry that creature off his shoulder if they wanted to, never mind it running away and hiding on its own."

"Not that anybody in town by this point would be fool enough to try to get that thing away from him," Buck said.

Josiah won that hand, though Chris's smirk suggested he'd come damned close.

As Nathan dealt the next round, he said, "So that's what cats look like in the East. Never saw such a one down South."

"Not in my part of the East!" JD's voice rose on an indignant note, much to Buck's amusement, and he glimpsed Nathan hiding a smile behind his beer glass. "It probably came from New York. They got all sorts of weird things there."

They'd played another hand and Buck was idly considering which of Inez's ever changing, and always tempting, food offerings there might be for lunch when he spotted Ezra heading their way at a crisp pace.

"Not good prospects?" Nathan said as Ezra approached them.

"On the contrary! Our esteemed visitors, gentlemen, are wide-eyed adventurers from the Nutmeg State delightfully eager to partake in all the fabled activities to be found in a frontier hamlet. They arrived on this morning's coach and are _thrilled_ to have so quickly encountered a worldly figure like myself to introduce them to real wild west poker in a real wild west saloon."

Vin shook his head, but grinned.

Josiah steepled his fingers. "Perhaps you could point out the church when you've finished fleecing them. They might like the chance to atone for their sins by dropping a few dollars in the collection plate."

Nathan snorted. "So if prospects are so good, how come you're here instead of over there?"

Ezra grimaced. "One of them is manifesting signs of a severe aversion toward furred creatures. He can't seem to concentrate on the matters at hand and I suspect he might be about to flee. So--" he moved around the table while reaching up to lift the beast off his shoulders "--I'll just leave our friend here with you."

Buck flinched and noticed everybody else also shifting uncomfortably, keeping a wary eye on Ezra and his bundle. Except Chris, of course. JD squeaked and leaned away as Ezra approached his chair, but Ezra just walked past him without a glance. Ignored all of them until--

Reaching Chris, he unceremoniously dropped the limp critter onto Chris's shoulder, then turned smartly on a heel and strode away without another word.

They all stared at Chris. Who kept calmly looking at his cards and puffing on his cigarillo while the evil, demonic beast settled itself on his shoulder like it was its second home. Pretending the rest of them didn't exist with Chris's own outstanding ability, it licked a paw, then wiped it over its face a couple of times. Seemingly satisfied, it turned its head for a look around from its new perch and noticed Chris's ear, which it then proceeded to thoroughly wash.

All of which Chris took in his stride and proceeded as usual as though there weren't a hellbeast on his shoulder sticking its tongue where it didn't belong.

"Two cards," Chris said, throwing a pair facedown onto the table.

Nathan blinked, picked up the deck, and dealt him a couple. "Well, seems that critter don't hate quite everybody other than Ezra after all."

"Indeed." Josiah's voice was equally mild. "It seems mighty fond of you, brother."

Buck couldn't stop staring at his oldest friend as everything around him he thought he'd understood, the whole mighty shebang, shattered like a lightning-struck tree before all the parts plummeted down and formed a sudden, stark new outline.

"Ain't that the truth. It's almost like it spends a whole lot of time with you." He couldn't quite keep the accusatory note out of his voice, but he was way beyond caring. "Maybe all that time when we don't see hide or hair of you...or Ezra."

He squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his forehead, trying to still his spinning world. "I don't even know why I'm surprised. It's exactly the kind of crazy bitching crap you'd pull."

Josiah pursed his lips and considered Chris with a tilted head. Or possibly he was staring at the creature. Or both, since they were now their own hybrid thing. "From the mouths of babes," he murmured, so low Buck only barely caught it.

"That don't even make sense," he said in despair.

Vin, who had stared at Chris with the rest of them, eyebrows rising, till he'd quickly shifted his eyes back down to his cards, laughed and tapped the table for a single hit. Nathan, who also seemed to have already recovered his equilibrium in the face of the complete overturn of their entire fucking world order, obliged him.

Only JD seemed to have missed the train. "What?" He stared around at them as they resumed the game like nothing earth-shattering had just happened. He switched his gaze back to Chris. Still gawking, his voice rose higher than normal: "Why does that hellcat like Chris so damned much?"

Buck lifted his head, eyes drawn like a magnet to true north to Chris and his ratty furred parasite, which had stopped washing Chris's ear and was now lying limp as a rag with its demon eyes closed and one paw dangling down the front of Chris's right shoulder, like it didn't have a blasted care in the world. Buck took a modicum of mean comfort in seeing gray hairs already decorating Chris's black duster, though his triumph soon wilted. After all, if Ezra didn't fuss about cat hairs--and Ezra didn't--then sure as shooting Chris wouldn't even notice them on himself.

JD's voice was plaintive as he looked hard at Chris. "How come it don't seem to mind you at all and you don't mind it neither?"

Chris ignored him. Naturally. The world hadn't spun far enough out of whack to change that basic part of how Chris related to the world.

Nathan said, in a bright voice, "Food. Anybody hungry? JD, why don't you go see what Inez is serving today."

JD stood, but narrowed his eyes as he looked round at them all. "Something's going on." He headed for the bar.

"More's going on, it seems, than any of us danged well ever wanted to know about," Buck muttered.

Chris, meanwhile, removed the cigarillo from his mouth to take a swig of whiskey, replaced the cigarillo, then spread a winning hand on the table like the sneaky old dog he was.


End file.
